Boccaccio’s The Decameron Essay

Boccaccio’s The Decameron Essay

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The Decameron, by Boccaccio, is a frame story written in the mid fourteenth century. There are a hundred stories told over a span of ten days. On the second day, a man tells a story about a princess, Alatiel, who was sent away to marry a king. Before Alatiel reaches her destination, she has sexual experiences with a lot of different men. Alatiel is treated like an object and allows this objectification to happen because she is so fickle and does nothing to stop the men. The fickleness of Alatiel and the treatment of her as an object is evident throughout the story.
The story starts off portraying Alatiel as an object when her father, the sultan of Babylon, promises her hand to the king of Algarve (48). Alatiel has no say in who she…show more content…

She is seen as a weak and fickle woman. When her ship wrecks, &#8220;she felt the need of advice'; (49). Alatiel doesn&#8217;t know how to do things on her own. She has always had servants to help her. After Alatiel realizes all that happened to the ship and everyone on it she &#8220;weeps bitterly'; (49). At this point Alatiel&#8217;s unbelievable adventures begin. She is taken to Pericone&#8217;s house. Pericone falls in love with her and wants to sleep with her. Alatiel tells her servants that &#8220;she herself had decided never to let anyone but her husband enjoy her'; (50). Pericone gets Alatiel drunk and into bed with him. Alatiel&#8217;s values aren&#8217;t so strong because Pericone gets her to sleep with him. After she loses her virginity &#8220;she often invited herself not with words&#8230;but with actions'; to Pericone (51). When Alatiel is taken from Pericone by Marato, she weeps but is soon comforted &#8220;with the assistance of the holy Stiff-in-hand God gave to man';(52). It doesn&#8217;t take much to comfort Alatiel. In the beginning of the story she doesn&#8217;t want to sleep with a man that is not her husband. By the first man Alatiel encounters her views on sex have changed. Alatiel&#8217;s adventures do not stop after two men. When Marato loses Alatiel the prince of Morea gets her. It doesn&#8217;t take Alatiel long to get over Marato.
Costanzo eventually gets Alatiel. He too comforts

“You are to look upon this grim opening as travelers on foot confront a steep, rugged mountain: beyond it lies a most enchanting plain which they appreciate all the more for having toiled up and down the mountain first,” (Boccaccio, pg. 7).
The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio embodies this verse. Until this time period, religion guided society like an invisible hand pushing everyone along. Throughout many generation religion evolved. From polytheism to monotheism, form idols to churches, people…

In the community that Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron is set in, females are held at a lower social ranking than males. As with most communities up till relatively recently in the past, women were not permitted to have a significant role in the community, other than that of a wife and matriarch. In The Decameron, Boccaccio shows that while they may not have notable social ranking, females do have an advantage in most aspects of the male-female relationship. Even though the tales deal with a range…

October 2, 2014
In his tales of the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio created a comedic image of early Renaissance urban life. It would be easy to dismiss these tales entirely from the historical record, but, even though they may be fiction, these tales were fabricated from the world that Boccaccio knew. If the author drew the details of his stories from the reality around him, should it not be possible to use these details to reconstruct an image of Boccaccio’s world? This is especially useful in discerning…

Throughout the various novelle of the Decameron there lies a rather conflicting role of women in relation to the society that Boccaccio 's Decameron was set in. From novella to novella the theme of women 's gender role fluctuates between misogynistic to feminist. It can be argued that Boccaccio was a feminist ahead of his time or that he shared the traditional views towards women of 14th century Italy. Overall, it is fair to say that Boccaccio does depict women as transcending men in many respects…

Giovanni Boccaccio's the Decameron, written in the Early Renaissance, is a sharp social commentary that reflected the ideas and themes of the Renaissance and of Renaissance Humanism. His tales of nuns and priests caught in compromising situations, corrupt clergy selling chances to see religious artifacts, and of wives cheating on their husbands show the changing ideals of the time and the corruption that was running rampant within the church and in the lives of the general populace. The Decameron speaks…

Reaction paper: The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio is not a singular, enclosed text but rather a series of texts that unfold as a result of a 'frame' tale. The Decameron is set during the plague in Italy, and at the beginning of the story, various people have fled the city and are hiding away in the countryside. They tell tales to pass the time and to amuse themselves and these tales make up The Decameron. The conceit is very similar to that of The Canterbury…

The Decameron: A Feminist or Misogynist text?
Giovanni Boccaccio is one of the leading Italian writers in the 1300s and has been considered as the father of Italian writing style through his composition of one hundred novelle. The Decameron continuously pictures women not as the objects of discussion but as the active producers and interpreters of their actions. Women are portrayed as they are or as they should be; they are shown to be as aggressive as men are while at the same time they can be…

The Decameron
BOCCACCIO, GIOVANNI
Born in 1313, Giovanni Boccaccio is one of the greatest figures in Italian Literature. He was born in Paris, France by a French woman who remains unknown, but on many occasion he speaks very highly of her. His father is an Italian; they are part of the middle class. As for their professional status, they were Merchants / Bankers. Although, Bocaccio was born out of wedlock, his father legitimized him and took him to his house, provided him with…

Neifile’s Tale in Boccaccio’s Decameron
The second story of Day 1 in Boccaccio’s Decameron is about a Jew named Abraham who becomes a Christian after his friend, Jehannot, convinces him to visit the court of Rome. At first glance, the storyteller, Neifile, presents it as a tale of a Jew’s conversion. On closer inspection, it becomes evident that the story focuses on language, labels, and popularity. In Neifile’s story, Boccaccio represents language as a way of labeling socially unpopular religious…

Boccaccio's Decameron is a masterpiece of early 14th century European literature; its bawdiness and its sheer wit are a wonderful, funny indicator of what life was like in 14th century Italy. However, the central framing device of the book itself - the Black Plague, which ravaged Europe around the time of the book's setting and publication - plays a somber but vital role in this important work. The importance of the plague to the story is no less evident than in the introduction, which demonstrates…